Authorial Intent/literary Theory

Famous quotes containing the words intent, literary and/or theory:

    Young, and so thin, and so straight.
    So straight! as if nothing could ever bend her.
    But poor men would bend her, and doing things with poor men,
    Being much in bed, and babies would bend her over,
    And the rest of things in life that were for poor women,
    Coming to them grinning and pretty with intent to bend and to kill.
    Gwendolyn Brooks (b. 1917)

    Criticism occupies the lowest place in the literary hierarchy: as regards form, almost always; and as regards moral value, incontestably. It comes after rhyming games and acrostics, which at least require a certain inventiveness.
    Gustave Flaubert (1821–1880)

    We have our little theory on all human and divine things. Poetry, the workings of genius itself, which, in all times, with one or another meaning, has been called Inspiration, and held to be mysterious and inscrutable, is no longer without its scientific exposition. The building of the lofty rhyme is like any other masonry or bricklaying: we have theories of its rise, height, decline and fall—which latter, it would seem, is now near, among all people.
    Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881)